August 26-27th - Issues with Homer After Winter Storage

When we got Homer home yesterday my first task was to look around inside. In the bathroom I found two mice on a sticky pad. That makes three - one under the hood and two here. Hopefully there are no more. After disposing of them I moved to the next project which was reinstalling the house batteries.

The house batteries are quite heavy and I have only about a quarter of an inch of clearance to get them in and out. The reason the battery compartment is so tight is that it was designed for one smaller 12 volt deep cycle battery. I replaced that single battery with two larger 6 volt golf car batteries because they hold a larger charge.  The batteries have been in the garage all winter on a charger/maintainer. I have to wheel the batteries out of the garage to the battery compartment. The two batteries are wired together to make 12 volts so I have to raise them together unto a plastic milk crate at the compartment door. The milk crate is a little lower than the battery compartment door but I can manage. In the past I have fought getting them in and out because of the limited clearance and the fact that the battery ground wire was shorter than the hot wire. The shorter ground wire did not allow me enough room to hook the batteries up while on the milk crate. I had to balance them on the compartment frame while I connected them. A real pain. To improve the situation I rode my scooter to O'Reilly's and bought a 12 inch long ground cable. I then bolted it to the chassis ground wire in the compartment. Here is a picture of the battery extension connection installed.

I wrapped the entire connection with two layers of electrical tape and then taped over all of that with gaffer's tape. This extension made it easy to connect the batteries on the milk crate. Once connected the batteries were then wiggled into place.

A couple of years ago I made plastic covers from milk jug handles to cover the exposed terminals because one time installing them an exposed terminal accidentally touched the compartment frame while wiggling the batteries in and IK got a big spark.  Here is a picture with an arrow pointing to one of the four homemade terminal covers held in place with wire ties.

Here is a picture of the batteries showing how close everything is once they are installed. The arrow points to the black ground wire which is the amount of  space between the batteries and ceiling of the compartment.

Here is a picture with an arrow pointing at the top of the compartment frame. The frame is actually lower than the top of the compartment so the batteries have to be pushed in on an upward angle.

The small red and black wires hanging out are for me to use to put a voltmeter on the batteries to check them more accurately than the analog meter inside and for connection to my small solar panel charger. The only way to check the water in the batteries is to pull them out. As you can image, a major pain.

The battery installation being completed I fired up the generator to exercise it. She started right up and after warming up was able to handle the air-conditioner.  I then turned on the furnace. It fired up perfectly, as did the hot water heater, and the refrigerator - both on electric and gas.

I next turned to the issue of the non-working backup camera. The monitor came on with "AV1" on a dark screen. This meant the monitor is working. The problem could only be two other things - the camera or the wire running to the camera from the dash monitor. I quit for the night and did some inquiring on the internet. Basically I read that the cameras rarely go bad but this one is pretty old so it was possible. The first thing to check was all connections.

This morning, after getting tested for Covid-19, I dug into the backup camera problem. I unplugged the monitor and plugged it back in, no picture. The wire to the camera runs from the dash monitor, through a hole in the dash and over to the right side of the cab where it is runs down to the floor, across the door, then back up to the ceiling cabinets where were it runs all the way to the back of the RV.

The next connection is behind the right kick panel. I took it apart and checked the connection. It was fine. I saw no damage to the wire in that area.  I then went back and to the camera, unscrewed it from its mount, and disconnected it from the cord running from the front dash area. I then took the camera to the cab, plugged the camera into the wire from the monitor, turned the monitor on, and I had a picture.  That meant that there was a problem with the wire running from the front to the back. I suspected mouse damage because I found this when we first purchased Homer in 2014. I had to purchase a new wire and fish it through all the cabinets.

I started looking through all the cabinets for damage and upon pulling the wire in one front cabinet I found this.

For whatever reason a mouse ate through the wire where it ran through this hole in the cabinet. The hole was plenty big enough for him to get through, he didn't need to do that and cause me all this grief.

As I recalled the cable I purchased in 2014 which runs from front to back was fairly expensive. I wondered if this time I could fix the damage this little bugger did. What did I have to lose? I cut the cable. Inside there are four very tiny wires wrapped with a metal mesh like in a TV cable. I had plenty of slack in the cable so I pulled the cable down out of the cabinet where I could work on it. I stripped the wires back. Here is a picture of the two ends.

The entire cable is less than a quarter of an inch in diameter so you can imagine how small the wires are to work with. They are so small my wire stripper would not strip them. I was going to attempt to solder them but decided to try crimp connectors because it would be hard to tape these tiny wires once soldered. The crimps worked and here is a picture of the cable wrapped in electrical tape after all the wires were crimp connected.

In the picture you can see the mouse turds and cabinet debris they left behind. I checked the camera for proper operation before securing the cable in place. It worked fine. I decided to move the cable up higher in the cabinet so the new connection wasn't laying on the floor of the cabinet where it could be subject to getting damaged when things were put in there. Here is a picture of the repaired cable mounted on the inside cabinet wall.

I then reinstalled the backup camera in its holder, plugged it in, and secured the extra cable in the back wardrobe. I checked it for operation again. It worked as it should.

Next winter I'm going to put a sticky trap in this cabinet area and hopefully catch any bugger before he or she does damage again. Mice are the bane of all RVers because the rigs often sit for long periods of time during the winter. I have to balance whether to take a chance on getting mice in the rig or letting Homer sit outside in the weather all winter. The last four years when we have been in Florida in the winter Homer has been in the large storage building we rent which is not out in the country. We didn't have any mice issues there.

My next project was checking the drawers for mice activity. I found some activity in all three kitchen drawers so we pulled everything out. Kelly washed everything while I washed the drawers with bleach and we reloaded everything. (A good time to eliminate some things we don't use.)

I still need to check all the air in the tires and the air in the air bags. Maybe tomorrow if it doesn't rain. I don't want to get that dirty today.



 
 

April 26th - Getting Homer Out of Storage Shed and New Trailer

It is bright sunny day and the rent is up so we going to get Homer out of the storage shed this morning. Each season it is always interesting to see what is not working or needs fixing after de-winterizing. The backup camera was not working a few weeks ago when I moved Homer. Hopefully it is just a connection issue.

We decided that we are getting too old to push mow the lake lot, particularly during the hot weather. I was going to buy a used riding mower to leave out there but to do that I would need to borrow a trailer to get it and borrow a trailer every time it needed to be hauled to town for maintenance, repair, etc. Additionally, you never know what you are getting in a used rider. We decided instead to purchase a trailer to haul our home riding mower out there as needed. We had looked at several used trailers, even driving to St. Louis, and found them all to be junk. We borrowed a 5 foot x 8 foot trailer a couple of weeks ago to haul the lawn mower and it only fit on the trailer by tying the discharge chute up and backing the mower on with part of the back of the mower hanging over the rail. We need a 6 foot x 10 or 12 foot trailer. They just don't seem to be available used in any kind of decent condition so we decided to buy a new trailer.  I wanted one big enough that John could haul his Polaris side by side if he needed to so we bought a 6 foot x 12 foot trailer. Here is a picture of Kelly with the trailer when we brought it home in the rain.

My one ton 4 x 4 truck sits very high so when hitched the front of the trailer was really high. I wanted to get it close to level so I needed a drop hitch on the truck. They are expensive, about $100.00. I remembered that I had a drop hitch I used when towing a car with the diesel pusher motorhome ten years ago. I hunted it up in the garage to put it to use once again.

Here is a picture of the hitch setup. The white arrow on the right points to the drop hitch itself. The left white arrow points to the chain I installed to keep the hitch lock pin, which is above the left green arrow, from getting lost.

Now with the drop hitch installed I have three pins, all marked with the green arrows above. To keep the trailer from being stolen when hooked up I ordered three locking pins. I will only use these when the trailer is hooked up to the truck and I have left it for some period of time. I will leave the hitch pin lock on all the time so the trailer doesn't "walk away" even sitting here at the house. When it quits raining we will load the mower and make a run to the lake.

April 22nd - No RVing Just Two More Days of Cleaning and Painting at the Lake Lot.

Since Covid-19 has sidelined our planned RV trips this summer we continue to ready the lake lot for camping  The shed, steps, and picnic table all needed a lot of attention.

The shed is about ten years old and after its initial painting when built, until its recent cleaning, it has remained untouched. We decided it needed a fresh coat of paint and we opted for a drastic change in look.

Here is a picture of the shed after it was cleaned and before repainting. The paint was faded on the back and sides but actually in pretty good condition.

Here is the shed after we finished painting it yesterday.

 

The colors are actually darker than they look in the pictures, which were taken in bright sunlight. The shed looks more "rustic" now and we like the outcome.

While I painted the trim on the shed yesterday Kelly continued to work on cleaning the steps. She then painted the flat surfaces which had worn. Here are a couple of pictures of her work. She did a great job. The landing and stairs look like new.

Our last project for this week was making some repairs to the picnic table. The picnic table came with the lot so we have no idea how old it is. (We have owned the lot over ten years.) It is really heavy and huge - eight feet long. It was mostly built with untreated wood so I have had to replace the seats and several top boards over the years. This year another top board, as well as a center brace underneath, had rotted away. Here is a picture of the table after the repairs. It needs to be painted and I have lots of brown paint left from the shed so I will use that. I cannot believe how expensive paint has gotten. Two gallons of exterior paint cost $90.00.

Our next project is to cut down three old cedar trees and trim various limbs on the pine trees. We may bring Homer out here and campout for a few days while we do that work. I'll need to get the electric turned back on first.

April 19th - Can't RV This Spring and Summer so Readying the Lake Lot for Camping

We have been working on getting the lake lot spruced up for camping since it appears this may be the only place we can go this summer with the RV. We have not camped on the lot in at least five years. We can go there and work and camp this spring and summer and social distancing is not a problem.

Yesterday was a beautiful day so we decided to go out and work on the shed and steps. My first project was to raise the shed four inches because due to settling runoff flow the back corner was sitting in the dirt. I forgot to take a before picture. I used my 3.5 ton floor jack for this project. It is heavy. I could not lift it into the HHR myself so Kelly had to help load it and unload it. I did a little digging in the middle of the shed on the low side and pushed the jack under the wall and jacked it up. It worked great. I added a four inch thick stone under each skid on that side and moved to the other side. I added a similar stone on each skid there and everything remained level. Mission accomplished.

The shed is 8 feet by 10 feet. Rusty, a neighbor, and I built the shed about ten years ago from a kit I purchased from Lowes. I painted it at that time but have done nothing to it since. For years we didn't have water on the lot so I couldn't clean it if I wanted to. Until last year there was a large pine tree near the rear corner of the shed on the property line. When the tornado came through last year that big pine tree was uprooted and blew down over the top of the shed. Luckily it twisted in the wind and fell mostly in front of the shed such that the shed was barely damaged.

Over the years the shed accumulated a lot of moss and mildew because of that tree and others on the lot. After all these years the shed looked terrible. Our goal yesterday was to scrub it down with bleach and ready it for a new paint job. It took Kelly and I over two hours to clean it and here is a picture when we finished.

Now that it sits higher we can see daylight under the right side. Also on the right side in the picture behind the ladder you can see the root stump from the downed tree and hole it came out of.

Next we moved to cleaning the steps. Here is a picture as Kelly started to scrub them down.

When we started you could not tell that they were painted gray. They sit under trees and were totally covered with several years of green mold. We both worked on them until we ran out of bleach and had to quit. I'll post a picture when we are done cleaning them.

We went home and I purchased paint for the shed. (I can't believe how expensive paint has become.) We planned on going back out today and while I painted the shed Kelly would finish scrubbing the steps and the picnic table, which looks as bad as the steps. Plans changed this morning when I woke up to rain. The forecast I saw yesterday was only cloudy. When things dry out next week we will go back out and finish these projects.

Covid-19 projects.

April 12th - Happy Easter and Another Project to Stay Busy

                                          HAPPY COVID19 EASTER EVERYBODY!

At 10:00 a.m. this morning our subdivision had a social distance singing of "Amazing Grace" out in the street. Nathan and Crystal provided the music on the boom box sitting in their driveway. Here are a couple of pictures. (The camera makes everything look farther away but it is clear to see there was plenty of distance between us.)

Everyone did a good job of "social distancing" throughout.  After we sang all the verses there was a prayer and everyone was then invited to give thanks in their own words. It was nice.

Project:

Yesterday and today I have been working in the shop on an upgrade to the stand for my wood lathe. Last year when I had to junk my old table saw I didn't want to throw away the nice metal stand it sat on for sixty years plus. I knew it would come in handy for a power tool at some point. For my birthday last summer my daughter, Alexa, bought me a small wood lathe. The saw stand was the perfect way to set it up. I mounted the lathe on a 2 x 8 and mounted the 2 x 8 to the stand. I then cut down three drawers I had laying around from an earlier project and mounted them below for storage. Here is a picture before I started revamping it yesterday.

After using the lathe a couple of times it was pretty clear I needed to put a top on the base to keep the saw chips out of the drawers.

Yesterday I took three pieces of half inch thick wafer board I had laying around and joined them together with glue and biscuits to make a piece wide enough for the top. Wafer board isn't good for any woodworking projects but it is fine for this stand top since 80% of it is hidden under the lathe. Here is a picture of the three pieces being glued together.

After the glue dried I cut the piece to size and painted it before I attached it and mounted the lathe. Here is a picture of the finished top installed.

I also added handles to the drawers. The drawers are handy for holding tools for the lathe, the table saw, blades for the band saw, and various owners manuals for shop tools.

After I finished this project I rearranged the shop a little to make more room. Rearranging and cleaning seems to be the thing to do during this quarantine from the Coronavirus. Kelly and I have cleaned out two closets, washed all the mold off the deck furniture, deck rails, gutters, and soffits, in addition to trimming all the shrubs and pruning some tree branches. If this goes on long enough I'll have to break down and wash the cars and truck.

Stay home and stay safe!

April 5th - Lawn Mower Repair

I'm posting today about the lawn mower repair.  Can you tell I'm getting bored? 

Mower Problem number 1:

One of the issues with the lawn mower not starting yesterday out at the lake was the pull cord jumping out of its guide on the handle when I pulled it.  The plastic guide was made with a slot in it so the pull rope can be fed through it. Over the years the guide has opened up and now very time I pull the cord it jumps out of the guide and falls to the ground.  Last year I put wire ties around the guide to keep the rope in place but they wouldn't stay tight enough to do the job. I also noticed that in a spot on the guide it was worn almost through, which was also fraying the rope. I decided to take off the guide, cement the guide closed, and repair the worn section with JB Weld. (A great product I use all the time.) It is as indispensable as duct tape and baling wire to an RVer.

Yesterday I made the repair to the guide and painted it black to match. This morning I re-installed the guide on the mower handle.  Here is a picture showing the guide with arrows pointing to the two areas repaired with JB Weld.

The top arrow points to where the guide was originally open for the rope to be inserted. The bottom arrow shows where the guide was worn by the rope over the years.  With the slot now cemented closed I couldn't slip the rope through the guide anymore. I cut the rope off at the handle, put the rope through the guide, and retied it in the handle. The repair came out nice and should last another ten years.

Mower Problem number 2:

I have used wire ties in several places on the mower over the years. The throttle cable cover melted at one point because it became loose and rested against the muffler. I couldn't find a replacement cable so I wire tied it to the guard to hold it in place so it would work. I noticed this morning that it was again flopping around so I re-wire tied it. Here is a picture with the new wire ties.

Mower Problem Number 3:

She wouldn't start at the lake yesterday. After getting home I pulled out the spark plug, cleaned it with a wire brush, re-gapped it, and reinstalled it. With the other repairs made it was time to start the mower. I primed it three times but no start. She didn't even cough. I pulled off the air filter and squirted carburetor cleaner into the carburetor. She ran until the carburetor cleaner burned off. I did it again and she caught and kept running this time. I let her run for about five minutes and killed her. I tried to start her again and she wouldn't start. I pushed the prime button once and she started up. I again let her run a while then killed her. I pushed the prime button one time and she started right up. I guess I will have to do this from now on. Now when she dies there is a little puff of blue smoke so I think she is just wearing out. With these cheap repairs I am hoping to get a few more seasons out of her.

April 4th - Next Best Thing to an RV Trip is the Lake

Last year we were thinking of selling our camping lot at Lake Perry because we haven't used it for several years. All we do is go out and cut the grass. Well, Covid19 has made our failure to make a decision on selling a good one because it may be the only place we can take the RV this summer.

Yesterday was a beautiful day so we went out to do some spring lot maintenance. There has been a branch hanging down over the lot driveway which has been low enough to hit the top of either RV when we backed into our spot. At home I strapped my extension ladder in the truck, packed the chain saw, lawn mower fuel, some beer and water, and we headed out to the lot. I wasn't sure if my fourteen foot extension ladder would reach the offending branch. Upon arriving I put the ladder up in a fork in the tree and was delighted that I could reach the branch with the chain saw. It was about six inches in diameter at the trunk. I cut it down and proceeded to cut it up. I was just about finished cutting everything up when the chain got caught and came off. The chain coming off apparently did a number on the chain because I could not get it completely back into the slot in the bar to get back to work. No more wood cutting until I got it home and fixed it. With a brand new chain saw and brand new blade I shouldn't have these problems. But sometimes that is my luck.

I then turned to my next chore, cutting the grass, which was about a foot tall. I filled the lawn mower tank with gas, primed it, and pulled and pulled but the mower wouldn't start. I had run it dry at the end of last season and suspected I flooded it trying to start it. I pulled off the air filter and sure enough I had flooded it. I didn't have a spark plug wrench so I couldn't pull it out and dry it off to get it started. I let the mower sit and tried later but it still wouldn't start. I have also been having trouble with the pull rope so I decided to give up on cutting the grass and take the mower home to work on it.

While I was fooling with the mower Kelly drug all the small branches to the firepit.  We always bring two beers each out to the lot when we cut the grass. We popped open a beer and sat around the firepit as we cut up the branches with a pruning shears and burned them.  Here is a picture.

It was a nice diversion. You can see the offending lawn mower in the background. This is the first time ever it refused to start. Not bad for a lawn mower I got for free over ten years ago because the handle needed welding.

While sitting around the campfire we noticed a bunch of turtles out on the tree branch in the lake behind us. Here is a picture of them.  I thought sure I would scare them off trying to get a picture but they all sat tight.  There had to be a dozen of them out there. Pretty cool but they obviously weren't practicing "social distancing".

We drank another beer and when the fire was down to ashes we loaded everything up and headed home. I will work on the two issues with the mower and go back another day to cut the grass. A good isolation activity.